


Candle in the Wind

by Niccolò Machiavelli (Piccolo_Machiavelli)



Series: Before the Storm, After the Fire [7]
Category: 15th Century CE RPF, 16th Century CE RPF, Historical RPF, Machiavelli - Fandom
Genre: Gen, so yeah there's the torture scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-14 22:54:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9208793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piccolo_Machiavelli/pseuds/Niccol%C3%B2%20Machiavelli
Summary: Machiavelli is about to face his biggest demon inside a foul-smelling room.





	

The first thing that hits me is the stench. 

In here, the smell is worse than any brothel I’ve ever been in, and even the very corners of the room are permeated by the thick, suffocating air of urine and blood. Not even the miracle at Cesena or the war of ‘09 could have prepared me for any of this. They claim they don’t spill blood, and they claim that it is not what the Medici want them to do. I know inside that the Medici couldn’t care less whether or not the torturers spill blood; they just want the truth to be exposed. 

And, after the stench, the next thing that hits me is the state of the room itself. I didn’t expect a torture chamber to be furnished like a king’s quarters with velvet-adorned furniture and golden rims everywhere, but I never expected to see anything like this. On the stone floor, there are many discolourations and puddles of unknown substances, and there is a bucket in the corner situated right under a hole in the ceiling. One of the guards in the room grabs the bucket and splashes it on the floor over a puddle. He tosses the bucket aside and peers through the doorway to stare at me and my former soldier.

“Ah, you’ve brought the prisoner,” the guard says, pulling the door open further to allow us to walk in. “Welcome to my little chamber of fun, Signore.”

In all her glory stands the rope behind the guard’s back. The rope is attached to a wooden wheel, tightly wound around it, and it stretches all the way up to a smaller wheel held up by a wooden beam, which it is hung over and dangling off of. The wheel is controlled by a person on the ground, and, no doubt, it will be either one of these two guards. I never once pictured it to look anything like this. When I look at it, it feels as if I am in a dream. I must be dreaming. It is not possible that I am here, about to be tortured, I think to myself, but I never was one for dreaming, was I?

“Well, it’s… bigger than I expected,” I answer, stifling a laugh. I am unable to since I cannot put my hand over my mouth, and I end up staring right at the guard as I giggle helplessly. “I’m not so sure I’ll fit.”

The soldier holding me grunts and yanks on the chains holding me, and I turn to grin at him. There is a jagged scar across his eye, and, while I am close to him, I am able to identify who he is. “I’m suggesting that you shut up. You’re in deep enough shit as it is anyway,” he hisses in my ear. He shoves me past the other guard, who shuts the door behind us as soon as we are all of the way inside the room. Alessandro. That’s his name, even though I personally referred to him as Alesso while he was under my command. I dare not address him personally in front of the other guards lest he be incriminated as well.

I refrain from making a snide remark. As much as I hate admitting it, there is a pit in my stomach and a lump in my throat. In the corner of the large room sits an object that appears to be a stool, but instead of having a flat board to sit on, it has a large, triangular spike on top of it. A short distance away from the inverted stool is a towering iron statue with the face of the Virgin Mary carved on a head at the very top of it. It contains two towering doors that are tightly sealed, although, it does not leave much to the imagination, and I am easily able to guess that it is some sort of trapping device. The chamber has been cleared of all other prisoners, and I am grateful to not have a spectacle.

“Admiring what you see?” Alesso asks me, trying to pull me back towards the rope, but he discovers that I am harder to move than he thinks. I feel as if I am frozen in place, stuck in one of Firenze’s bitter winters after being left out in the cold for too long. Even my hands have grown numb. 

“You’re starting the questioning this soon, eh?” I respond, turning my head away from the grotesque machinery. Everywhere I look, there is something soaked in blood. A huge puddle on the floor. Another huge puddle on the floor, and this one has a demented-looking metal contraption in the middle of it, its metallic edges rusted and partially snapping off. I brace myself for the tightening grip around my wrist, for the nails piercing into my flesh, for the jerk backwards to yank me into position, and I greet it with a smile. 

“Don’t fuck around with me. You’re in no position to, not after the offence you’ve committed. Do you think you can get away with conspiring to kill our noble lord of Florence? No crime goes unpunished in this city,” Alesso reminds me as he slips his hand into his pocket to fish out a key. He withdraws it and unlocks my chains, and they drop to the floor with a loud, metallic pang. He kicks them away, and he returns his grasp on me, reaching over to grab the long, loose end of the rope. 

“What are you doing with that?” I ask him, feigning a tone of innocence as the rope is tied around my wrists, squeezing them together and pinching my skin. Alesso is not gentle in his ministrations. “Please, Signore, I am but a bitty damsel! Oh, it hurts! You’re hurting me!” I struggle to escape the bonds, but my thrashing stops when he motions to another guard, who is concealing himself behind a corner.   
The guard steps out, never taking his eyes off of me as he adjusts his black hood. He pulls it taut over his face, making it so that his eyes are the only thing that sticks out. He walks towards the wheel, his steps slow and calculating, one foot over the other. When he finally reaches the wheel, he runs his gloved hands over the wood and rests them on two of the handles, tightening his grip there. Alesso nods, and the guard slowly begins to turn it.

At first, I notice nothing but the eerie silence in the room and the feeling of several dreadful pairs of eyes boring into my skull, and how the light seems to enter the room through only a small crack in the wall, save for the torches that line the walls. Then there is an odd sensation of soft tugging as my arms are slowly lifted. 

Quickly, something is very wrong. 

My arms aren’t meant to bend backwards as if I’m some Venetian carnevale performer showing off my extremely flexible limbs, they’re supposed to be going the other way. The right way, not the way where they’re being lifted up behind my back until I’m certain they’re going to rip right off. I suppose I’ve never considered what I would actually do without arms. Now is probably a good time to start.

I smile at them, despite everything. I smile because it is the only thing I know how to do when faced with something I cannot overcome. You, you who can make a joke out of everything. It’s true, isn’t it? His words are harsh but honest. I will continue to smile even as my body is being dashed upon the floor into a thousand pieces like broken eggshells and broken glass, and my soul will escape from the empty shell to float about as if it was in limbo. 

I inhale sharply, and I brace myself to look down at the menaces below me. All I can muster out is a feeble attempt at humour: “How’s the weather faring down there for you, signori?”

“Silence!” Alesso barks, and he manages to hold me there, in complete silence. I dare not even breathe. A gaze shifts around the room, and only they know what it means. With a flourish of his devilish hand, Alesso makes a gesture to the man at the wheel. 

And suddenly, I am falling. A humble man on his way to heaven, and he is missing his wings. He has been stopped at the pearly gates, kicked from the clouds, cast out of God’s graces. I am falling feet-first into Hell. My hands, tied behind my back as they are, cannot break the fall. But the man at the wheel can.  
Right before I hit the ground, he checks my fall, and I wildly swing on the rope, held up by only my arms in an awkward position. The pain shoots through my arms and spirals up them like a fast-growing vine, reaching into the deep recesses of my back. I stifle a cry. Think of Marietta. Poor advice for a man who’s currently suffering from the lack of a woman’s embrace. But I cannot bare the thought of being the man who crumbled and snapped like a branch. It would make a poor story for the children to hear. I was the knight in shining armour, the one who dashed away from the scene before he was injured by the lances, and that’s what I’ll tell them, too.

“Signori, where-” I pause to catch my breath, peering down at the men below me. The wheel makes a creaking noise, and I feel the rope give, lowering me a little bit more towards the ground. “Where are the questions?

Alesso approaches me, spinning his hand in a circle. With that motion, the creaking noise starts up again, and I am lowered until I am barely suspended in the air. The ground is just out of reach, and no matter how much I stretch my legs, I cannot touch it. I resist the urge to kick Alesso backwards, knowing that he could sever my spine if I try anything. “Niccolò, darling,” he jeers, “What role did you play in the Boscoli Conspiracy to kill our Lord Medici, Giuliano? We know you played some kind of role. Don’t even lie. We have evidence against you.”

Boscoli? Who? “Boscoli?” I repeat. “I’m sorry. I’ve never heard that name before in my entire life.” I do not lie to them. His name sounds like some type of food I could buy at the market - a vegetable, even. I bat my eyes at Alesso, kicking my feet ever-so-slightly, waiting for his response with bated breath.

“So you know nothing about this?” Alesso shoves a crumpled-up piece of parchment in my face, and upon realising that I am unable to open it, he blushes and smooths it out between his fingers. “This, I mean.”

I scan the piece of parchment. Ink has been hastily scribbled onto it in what appears to be a list of names. There is no purpose for the names listed above. It starts out as an organised list, and then trails off into a cluster clumped into every corner. Some of the ink has bled and run off the parchment. Whoever was lucky enough to have their name disappear avoided having their arms snapped like twigs.

Right in the middle of the parchment sits my name, complete with a horrendous misspelling: Nicolo Maciaveli. I deduce that the person who made this list must have had their child write that name.   
“I don’t know how to tell you this, but…,” I trail off, attempting to stifle laughter, “that’s obviously not my name. Look, if you even tried to pronounce it, it would sound completely different. That’s not me.”

Alesso grunts and shoves the piece of parchment into his pocket, motioning to the guard. “Ehi, Renato, he’s a persistent little shit. Give him another drop or two. If he still says nothing, we’ll start again tomorrow.” He drags his foot on the ground, smearing a puddle of some unidentifiable liquid underneath his boot. 

Renato cracks his knuckles and squints at Alesso. “Isn’t there a limit to how many drops there can be, Alesso? We can’t exhaust everything today,” he responds. Suspended as I am, the pain grips my wrists and sends a flurry of spikes running through them. I twist them to offer myself relief, but my struggling agitates Renato. He just shakes his head and raises the rope again.

“The limit is four,” I remind them in case they’ve forgotten. I learned many things when I was Second Chancellor of Florence, and I can still remember all of the leather-bound books stacked on top of my desk. Hours I spent memorising the text on those filthy, crinkled pages. Rules for the city, history, even the religious texts that I managed to skim over every single time. Specifically, there was one part of a book I read that contained punishments and how to conduct them. There could be no blood spilled and no more than four drops on the strappado. It amazes me how willing they all are to break the rules.

“Oh, we haven’t forgotten,” Alesso remarks. “Two more drops, asshole. If it keeps Giuliano off of our asses, that’ll be all for today. Resist all you want. You will say something.”

“I won’t say shit,” I say in a strained voice. “Not a word while you have mine. There is nothing to say.” I squeeze my eyes shut as the rope arrives at the top of the contraption, carrying me with it. I brace myself for another drop, knowing that their efforts to extract any information from me will be over shortly.

Alesso calls to me from his lowly position on the ground: “Anything to say?” and I don’t answer, I don’t look at him, I don’t even move. I don’t even open my eyes. All I’m aware of is terrifying suspense and an obnoxious dripping coming from the ceiling. I refuse to change my expression even as I’m released from terrifying heights.

This check on the rope is more brutal than the last. The rope clenches my wrists so tightly that all of the blood in my hands has slipped out, and the pain I felt before in my hands has been replaced by emptiness. The burning has relocated itself to the bones of my shoulders and my back, and if I listen closely enough, I can hear the bones slowly snapping. As much as I hate to admit it, I can hardly bear it.

But I don't show anything on my face. Any grimace or wince is a sign of weakness and takes me too many steps away from the promise I made before I entered this dingy little room. I swore to God I wouldn't break, and if anyone knows me, they know I don't ask God for too many things. 

“Niccolò!” Alesso screams below me, and I feel him grab ahold of my ankle and shake me wildly. “Now’s not the time for napping! You're in here to confess, and that's all! Say something, God damn you!” 

At last, I open my eyes. Alesso’s face is bright red and swollen with an engorged vein in his temple. Sweat is pouring down his forehead. I'm amazed that he would be the one losing his composure before I would. I just flash him a shit-eating grin and wait for the inevitable pulling up of the rope that will follow. 

Not on your life, I contemplate responding, but I dare not say a word. By now, my legs are shaking and the weight of my body has become too much for my arms to bear. Marietta’s always been the one who brings me supper and reminds me to eat something, and I know I'm not particularly heavy. I never thought a slight man like myself would feel so heavy all of a sudden as if he had the weight of the entire world upon his shoulders. My arms are strained. It's a hassle to bring me to the top, I've noticed. 

“One last chance,” Alesso says. I don't even acknowledge him. I'm at my breaking point, and I can't hide it any longer. All that runs through my head is the promise I can feel myself breaking. 

I can feel myself breaking. 

And it is with that that I am released and thrown from heaven’s graces once more. It is too late to be that knight, that soldier that I swore I would be. I come tumbling down off of my high horse and onto the cold ground below. The bones in my shoulders have given into the blows, and a definitive crack marks the hark of the cannonballs, the blast, the sharp, tumultuous, tumbling fall from grace. 

And it is with that that a valiant soldier lies next to his extinguished torch as everything grows dark around him. Only a small cry he issues from deep within his mouth. 

Help me.


End file.
